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Browsing Tags deep sleep

Just as surely as your dreams want to be understood, so too do they want to be remembered. And yet not remembering dreams, or denying even having them, is one of the most common remarks I hear about dreaming. We now know that scientific evidence indicates that everyone dreams, whether they recall those dreams or not. There do seem to be some very rare exceptions, and these cases involve damage to a particular part of the brain.

If you or someone you know isn’t remembering their dreams, there could be a variety of reasons why, including:

They don’t want to. This could because they don’t value their dreams, they might see dreams as just random firings of the brain, they may have been ridiculed when young for talking about dreams and this learned behaviour taught them dreams were trivial and unimportant. Another reason is that the dreams they have might be too confronting or difficult to deal with in everyday life. This sometimes happens when people have been traumatised in some way, their dreams are trying at a subconscious level to deal with their suffering, and it might be too much to for the waking mind to deal with straight away.

Alcohol and drugs, particularly certain sleep inducing medication, have been shown to reduce the quality of REM sleep, where dreams often occur and are easier to remember. This creates the effect of feeling that you have had a deep sleep, and even though dreams can occur in non-REM sleep they are far more difficult to recall. (Some drugs however, especially nicotine patches and hypertension medication are know to have the alternative effect and induce strangely vivid dreams or even nightmares!)

Being over-tired. The sleep of the exhausted is somewhat similiar to the sleep of the intoxicated, in that the natural sleep cycles are altered, with far less REM sleep and greater “deep sleep.”

Sudden waking and a busy lifestyle. Waking to an alarm or baby crying, leaping immediately out of bed and rushing to do whatever it is needs to be done means the mind has no time to reflect on what was just going on in sleep. If you have the luxury of waking naturally, maybe even just when on holidays, you should notice that with a little effort, your dream recall can increase quite dramatically – provided of course you weren’t out getting totally drunk the night before!

Paying attention. The ability to remember dreams comes very naturally to some, but even they can improve and someone who never remembers their dreams at all can learn to by giving it a little attention. Like any skill, it improves with practice and dedication.

So the good news, if you really want to and you are committed, chances are you can do a lot to remember your dreams. But if you are harbouring some latent skepticism, mistrust, fear or disrespect of your dreams and your subconscious, you will eventually have to address those hidden feelings before your dreams come to you freely.